


even if you're dead you shouldn't try to eat your own fingers

by ckret2



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Cannibalism, First Meetings, Gen, Going to Hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22190755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: When she'd arrived in Hell, Niffty had kind of assumed that eternal damnation meant everything started hurting, from the inside out, and kept hurting worse and worse forever.No, she'd been reassured by a man who sounded like he was talking through a radio—actually, that was the hunger. You still have to eat after you're dead.Who knew.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 124





	even if you're dead you shouldn't try to eat your own fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted yesterday to the prompt: "Alastor cooking".
> 
> “I could do something cute with this,” I thought, and then I went, “or I could hop straight into cannibalism.”

Niffty had been dead for three weeks.

This was the first time she was going to have a proper meal since arriving in Hell.

She'd kind of assumed that not eating was part of the whole experience of being dead. And that eternal damnation meant everything started hurting, from the inside out, and kept hurting worse and worse forever.

No, she'd been reassured; no, actually, that sensation was hunger. She was supposed to be eating. Just like in life.

"It feels a bit different when you're dead," the man who sounded like he was talking through a radio had said. He'd been the one to find her, weak and exhausted on a public bench, and drag her indoors. "Everything feels a bit different. After all, you're not hungry because you'll starve to death without food, but because someone upstairs decided to inconvenience you. A bit of divine sadism, I suppose. But you figure out your new body's signals soon enough."

They were in a club, from the looks of it, although it was a painfully old-fashioned looking one, like the kind of place that should have been shut down before she was even born, and the fact that it was currently closed for business and empty made it seem like even more of a desolate relic of a past generation. The radio man had swept Niffty past the club owner, appeasing her with a few words, in order to use her kitchen; and it occurred vaguely to Niffty, in a confused lightheaded way, that these two people who didn't look that much older than her might have been born before Niffty's parents were born and died before Niffty herself was born. 

And now Niffty was teetering with weakness (with hunger?) on a stool next to a stove, the club owner was standing huffily by the kitchen door, and the radio man was cheerfully stirring something in a pot.

Maybe Niffty really _was_ just hungry; it still didn't feel quite like hunger, but the smell from the pot was the most divine scent she'd ever encountered (and she'd just learned that, with her nose missing, she now apparently smelled with her tongue), and she was desperately tempted to grab the boiling pot with her bare hands and stick her face in it. She fought to resist the urge.

Light-headed and dizzy as she was, she'd already lost track of what they'd been talking about for the past few minutes as the radio man cooked; so she shared the first thought that came into her head: "We can't die again, right?"

"More or less," the radio man said.

" _Technically_ , we can," the club owner corrected. "But only if an angel swoops down and gets ya. Nothing else will do it."

"So," Niffty said, "if you cut somebody up, they'll stay alive?"

The club owner gave her a slightly unsettled look; but a dinging noise like might have been played for the winner in a game show came from somewhere around the radio man, and he said, "Now you're figuring out how things work here!"

"So if you cut them up into bits and eat them," Niffty said more quickly, "and they're still alive, are their fingers and stuff still alive inside you? Can they feel it while they're digesting? _Do_ they digest?"

Now that she understood what it was, she wasn't able to think about anything but her starvation. She had, over the past few minutes, been almost overwhelmed by the temptation to start gnawing off her own arm. The only thing holding her back was the nightmarish thought of her hand still being alive inside her stomach.

Horrified, the club owner said, "Listen to that! Little lady, how old _are_ you?" The radio man, however, cracked up with laughter. It sounded like a whole audience was laughing along with him.

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child," Niffty mumbled. "I'm an adult, I'm just short." 

"And those are some very adult questions!" said the radio man, smiling broadly, with a tone that suggested he wasn't quite convinced that she was as adult as she claimed. "I can _assure_ you, once you bite off someone's finger, it's as dead as any other meat. The victim doesn't feel a thing. Well—" he chuckled, "not with the finger, anyway. And you can digest it just like anything else!" 

"I think I've lost my appetite," the club owner muttered. 

Niffty eyed her own arm again thoughtfully—her strange new arm, slender and insectile, not much meat but probably a satisfying crunch—and asked, "You're _sure?_ " 

Before the temptation could overwhelm her, the radio man pushed a full bowl into her hands. "Why don't you find out?" 

The club owner gasped. "Excuse me! _What_ did you just cook in my club?!" 

The ensuing discussion was lost on Niffty as she seized a spoon and devoured her first meal in Hell. 

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/190155366957/soundwavereporting-replied-to-your-post-whats). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


End file.
